Sunday, 7 April 2013

Campaign Day at Tredegar Reavers: Testing the New Tau!

And so the Tredegar Reavers put on their first campaign day: VYNDRA II. Jacob came up with the rules and scenarios, so much kudos to that man!

Armies were made from 2 x 500 forces, 1 HQ and 1 Troops unit compulsery. So my Evandalists were to be rolled out again for action! However, with a difference. Not by me! I myself was using the brand new Tau Codex, along with another person who came to play. My list looked roughly like this.

Fireblade Cadre, 10 fire warriors, 6 firewarriors, 8 pathfinders, riptide, broadside, hammerhead, two crisis suits, and a 3 man stealth team. No drones or anything, everything was pretty basic but I just wanted to squeeze as much in to give everything a go. Leaning over winning was the main aim today!

As always, Huw was in attendance putting on a game of No Quarter with Mike, Aaron and Owain. Couple of pictures are included!

Myself and Jacob got to club nice and early to get things set up, and here are the four tables we used. There was another but it wasn't needed, so I've just included these!

My first game was against a Necron force. Part of Jacobs plan was that the first game most of your units would deepstrike even if not normally allowed, except if a vehicle in which it comes on from your table edge. A few of my units are ready to arrive, so I deep strike my Riptide fairly centrally. Scatters. Mishaps. Rolled a one. Cry. The model I'd put a lot of effort into getting some sort of painted shape was killed before it had rolled a dice! Ho hum, on with it! We had four objectives to control, so my opponent had oen unit of immortals on his, a tough test to budge! I had my 10 man unit of firewarrios and my Fireblade Cadre, on one of mine. Second turn, he brings down his Necron Lord and he scatters. Mishaps. ROLLS A ONE!!! DICE GODS WHYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!! Well, bonus for me but horrid for the Necron player! In the end I was able to get a Crisis suit to contest his objective while holding my own. Game finishes 4-2 to me, Tau victorious!

Some of the other fights, Space Marines vs Chaos

Eldar and Dark Eldar allies vs Chaos

This was the Necron Lord that mishapped, lovely looking beastie!

This was Tau versus my Evandalists, commanded by Jason. He had some terrible luck, the Chaplain dying and after Jase rolled a one on the injury chart Jacob had concocted was dead for the entire campaign! Ouch!

No Quarter! in action, scurvy and crocodiles!

My next game against Chaos allies, this was a very close game. Chris' bezerkers came zooming down, I managed to blow one rhino up but out stomped Kharn who killed my broadside, but a railgun shot to the face soon stopped him. His other unit of bezerkers then failed to assault me twice and were wiped out by a combination of the new Tau rule 'Supporting Fire'. This helped give me enough sixes when shooting overwatch to make them just out of range of charging me the first time then finishing the squad off the second time. Score! The other Chaos had his Lord fly down the other flank and wiped out my Cadre and Firewarriors. Once again, a Railgun shot from across the board killed him.

My Riptide then tried to zoom foward, using the super charge I moved 17" forwards to close the gap with the Chaos objective. 7 bolt pistol shots, look at those to wound rolls! I made sure my dice saw that so they could see how to perform! The riptide only killed a couple, but it was worth a shot. In the closing moments of the game my hammerhead was able to blast apart just enough of the squad to cause them to run from the objective and off the table... thus making it a draw. Crazy game!

Some action on the Tyranid moon board.

More No Quarter, showing off the Island feature Huw had created.

Had to take a quick snap of this, the one Chaos players objective. What a beatiful piece of genius!

One of the Arena of Death matches. Being a Tau player I wasn't too bothered with this, but it was fun watching some of the other guys go at it. Moment of the Arena goes to Jason rolling a one when a fire warrior shot him for his armour save. Bad luck Jase!

Everyone had to hand in one model for the best painted award, we voted for the top three, then others voted for the top one. My Chaplain came second I believe!

Ah, my game against Alun will be a memorable one for my Tau! We were all given a special card at the beginning of the day which we could use in any game. Mine was "Was that a Lictor?" which meant I could move any one unit of my enemy 12" away from where they had been set up in deployment. Seeing as Alun had taken an Aegis Defence Line and quadcannon I moved Yriel and his guardians out and shot them to ribbons, leaving Yriel on two wounds. My markerlights then removed the cover saves for the Eldar Rangers and Farseer who were then promptly shot at by everything in the second turn! Yriel slid around and took out my stealthsuits, and then charged the pathfinders. Overwatch from those alone took his last two wounds, result!

The enemy!

Aluns raider flew down the right, which I blew up, and then decimated
the squad with fire from the Riptide. I then charged the squad and kept
then held up for several turns while my army moved to capture the Relic
and further themselves away. The Riptide fell, as it was incredibly hard
to hit those pointy ears but the last two Dark Eldar died and Alun was
wiped out. Victoy!

This was a scene as another Tau player tabled the Khorne Bezerkers, heres Kharn before he was obliterated.

This was the final game, and was a little bit different. HQ and any other unit had to go around chasing Relics, when one was controlled you had to roll a dice, if it was a 6 you'd win, otherwise it was replaced elsewhere on the table. A lot of city terrain was used for this! The only time I managed to get to one, I was able to roll the six and hold the main objective! Victory for the Greater Good.

And so the end comes, and we hold aloft our certificates. I was the owner of the Silver Throne, and, most pleasingly the best sportsmanship award too! The other Tau player won the overall campaign for scoring a shedload of victory points, best army and best mini, where as the Chaos player won the Arena of Death with his juicy Chaos Daemon Prince. Jason also won a certificate, for being the best roller of the 'one' on a D6, but could not be pictured due to having to leave early. As you can see, I'm the large ogre on the right.

So all in all a great day, we've raised a nice wee bit of money to go towards more scenary and got some good games of 40k in! First thoughts with the Tau, they're an incredible defensive army, supporting fire means anything coming close to you will suffer a few wounds from the amount of overwatch fire you can pour out. The Broadside didn't do much, but I had that mainly to take out flyers. The riptide performed well despite its terrible start, and the Fireblade Cadre's ability to add an extra shot to the fire warriors proved well worth his meagre 60pts. Unit of the day, Pathfinders. They are amazing and make the rest of the Tau so much better. Can't wait to play more games with them!